Time Shift Your TV – White House Christmas

This week is likely to bring more devastatingly sad images from the tragic school shooting in Connecticut on television. If your children want to talk about what happened, you need to be ready to address their questions and give them lots of hugs. And when the TV is on, you need to be extra aware to find appropriate programming. One uplifting possibility with a touch of history thrown is NBC’s look at holiday traditions at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in A White House Christmas: First Families Remember, airing Thursday at 8 p.m., and repeating on Friday at 9 p.m.

Meredith Vieira hosts the new special that covers 10 presidential families over the past 50 years. Interviews include First Lady Michelle Obama and former First Ladies Laura Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barbara Bush and Rosalynn Carter. Many “first children” (now grown up) also talk about what it was like to celebrate the holidays in the White House. Among them are Jenna Bush Hager, Chelsea Clinton, Dorothy Bush Koch, Michael Reagan, Amy Carter, Tricia Nixon Cox, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Lynda Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson.

They’ll talk about the amazing decorations in this historic and famous house, including 50 Christmas trees that are tucked throughout the corridors and rooms and a gingerbread mansion from the White House pastry chefs that is sure to inspire the budding bakers in your home.